Norwich was also W. Sebald country. I felt a bit embarrassed now that I was a contemporary writer myself. I also had a couple of copies of my recently published book, which I planned to give to Martin Amis when I met him, or donate to the library, eventually gave to a couple of girls I thought were cute.
I was on the train when I opened it and joined the narrator on his travels through the Suffolk countryside, examining the skulls of the dead and the history of silk in China and the West. The train was old and carried few passengers: a man reading a newspaper, a woman sleeping and two girls with lots of suitcases. I thought it might be nice to fall a bit in love with an English girl, like in a Kureishi story.
The train stopped. I looked out of the window. I heard the voice of a conductor: the only word I understood was fatality, fatality on the tracks, fatality on the road , something like that.
The man who was reading the newspaper raised his eyes when he heard the voice. He made a tired gesture. The two girls had been looking at me. The train started. A man came along selling coffee and I closed the book and moved over to sit with Marta and Natalia. U nlike Marta and Natalia, I would be living on the outskirts of Norwich, on the university campus: another village, a kind of grey residential neighbourhood with students from all over the world. Norfolk Terrace and Suffolk Terrace were two halls of residence built in the shape of ziggurats.
I arrived at night but there was a guy still awake at the security lodge who gave me my keys. He made a joke about me having two surnames and explained in detail where my room was, so I only got lost three times. I shared a floor with eleven British lads, a German and a guy from California.
